SHEBOYGAN - Aurora Health Care officials on Monday confirmed they want to keep moving forward with plans to spend up to $324 million building a medical center at the Field of Dreams.

That’s how much money Aurora’s board of directors has OK’d for a new hospital, surgery center and medical office facility to replace an aging building on the city’s north side. And that’s the place they’ve said they’re most interested in putting it.

“Our goal would be to stay in the city, and we think the best location within the city is this Field of Dreams location,” Carrie Killoran, executive vice president for Aurora’s central region, said Monday at an informational open house aimed at airing out some project details.

Open house organizers set up information booths inside the Blue Harbor Resort and Conference Center where attendees could talk with Aurora staffers about the project. No designs or architectural renderings were shown — an official at the event said those haven’t been drawn up yet — and hospital officials don’t know how many square feet or beds the new facility would have.

“Our board just approved this project in December, so we're early in the process of the actual plans,” said Dave Graebner, president of the Aurora Memorial Medical Center hospital in Sheboygan.

But Aurora’s leaders did have a few specifics they were prepared to share — like the $324 million figure, an amount Graebner said would cover a potential new land purchase, eventual building and design work and likely efforts to tear down Aurora’s current hospital along North Avenue.

And, like Killoran, Graebner said Aurora is committed to its efforts to build at the Sheboygan Area School District-owned Field of Dreams. That site currently is home to several athletic fields and sits near the corner of North Taylor Drive and Saemann Avenue, putting a potential future medical center there almost next door to St. Nicholas Hospital.

It also would put a potential future hospital in the same neighborhood where Aurora has in the past tried building other medical facilities — and where neighbors have pushed back strongly. Aurora eyed the Field of Dreams in a previous bid to build an outpatient surgical center and medical office spaces. But a sale of the land by the school district fell apart last year after locals, alleging open meetings violations, filed a lawsuit to block it.

The new plans to build a facility there have started drawing pushback again.

“I think we need a referendum,” Judy Straus, who lives in the city and opposes Aurora’s plans, said Monday night. Letting Sheboygan voters give their thumbs up or down to the development at the ballot box, she said, would be preferable to the project being “shoved down our throats.”

But Sheboygan schools Superintendent Joseph Sheehan, who was also at Monday’s open house, questioned how appropriate a referendum on the matter would be.

“I’m not sure why we would do that,” he said. “It’s a decision that board members get elected to make a decision on.”

Aurora already has a parcel of land just south of Sheboygan in the Town of Wilson — Killoran clarified the land is actually being held for the hospital by Aurora’s real estate broker. But hospital officials have said railroad traffic cutting through the area could cut off possible ambulance routes, making it a troublesome spot on which to build.

Debbie Desmoulin, another local opposed to a possible project at the Field of Dreams, said she’d rather see Aurora build on the south side. Monday’s event, she said, didn’t change her mind.

“We have a park there (at the Field of Dreams). We also have a medical complex: St. Nicholas medical complex. We don’t need another,” Desmoulin said. “If Aurora really wants to serve the community, they can go to the south side where they have property.”

Graebner said Monday’s open house was aimed as much at providing information to the public as at pulling in comments from local citizens. The questions and comments voiced at the event, he noted, will help officials as they draw up more specific project plans.

And, despite opposition from some to build at the Field of Dreams, Aurora’s leaders on Monday said that plot is the only place they can likely build if they want to keep their future hospital in the city.

“We’ve done a pretty exhaustive review of locations,” Killoran said. “... There is not a lot available in the City of Sheboygan.”

Reach McLean Bennett at 920-453-5133, mbennett2@gannett.com or @Bennett_McLean on Twitter.